CHINE – Xi'an - Stone helmets, armor and the remains of thousands of animals and relics related to animals are among the latest archaeological finds at Emperor Qinshihuang's mausoleum in Shaanxi province, according to CCTV.com. The items were found in excavations at the celebrated site, which is home to China's iconic Terracotta Warriors. More than 400 pits, stone helmets and armor discovered. Zhou Tie, the head engineer of the Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum, said that during a recent excavation, the archaeological team learned the general structure of the mausoleum and a large number of pits were discovered. More than 400 pits were found in the mausoleum and dozens of small pits and tombs were found around the site. A large number of stone helmets and armor were found surrounding the mausoleum.. Experts believe these were not used in actual war, but their real function still needs to be researched. Ancient people of the time used animals as burial objects and the emperor's mausoleum was no exception. The new archaeological findings reveal that thousands of animal-related relics have been found in the mausoleum; that makes it the tomb in China with the most animal species so far. "Different animal species were unearthed in Emperor Qinshihuang's mausoleum, including real animals and those made of pottery or iron," Wu Lina, from Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum said. During the Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC) people gradually grasped animals' habits and learned the skills necessary to raise and train them to some extent. According to preliminary statistics, the most unearthed animal in the mausoleum is horse. Horses come in many forms: pottery, copper, horse bones unearthed from stable pits. Other animals unearthed include rare birds and beasts and water fowl. Yet to be identified are animal bones. Wu Lina said that after years of excavation, the animals unearthed from the mausoleum include deer, muntjac deer, figures of copper fowl, such as cranes, swans and swan goose, plus the bones of sheep, chicken, fish and turtles, as well as shellfish ornaments. Animal and human beings have existed side by side since ancient times, and the concept of biodiversity should be advocated even vigorously nowadays, Hou Ningbin, the museum's head, said.

USA – Beaver River - Nasa has revealed the latest find from lidar technology - near the Beaver river in western Oklahoma. Some 10,500 years ago, hunters gathered there each year. They funneled bison into narrow, dead-end arroyos — steep gullies cut into the hillside by the river — where they killed them en masse, sliced off the choicest meat and leaving behind piles of skeletons. Walk through western Oklahoma today and there is little visible evidence of that ancient landscape, much less the hunting expeditions it hosted. Few bison remain, and dirt and rocks have filled in many of the arroyos. However, laser-based remote-sensing equipment called lidar has give archaeologists a clear view of the fossils and bones hidden below the surface. In the Beaver River area, the archaeological research team scanned the landscape with an airborne Teledyne Optech lidar device that benefited directly from the work the company has done at NASA — and the scans helped uncover important history. 'You'll never find bison bones with airborne lidar, but you can find the geological features that suggest a place to look,' said Meg Watters, who specializes in remote sensing and 3D imaging for archaeology. That allows archaeologists to 'see structures or features that were so overgrown that they wouldn't be obvious at all to someone on the ground,' explains Paul LaRoque, vice president of special projects at Teledyne Optech.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3962130/The-laser-forest-spotted-Stone-age-settlement-Ohio.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490MALTE – Rabat - A small tooth is almost all that remains of a 2,000-year-old baby discovered in an ancient burial site beneath a Rabat school. The series of catacombs, discovered during works to extend the playing fields of the St Paul’s Missionary College, also revealed the remains of “at least eight” ancient island dwellers, decorative pottery – and new clues to unlocking the secrets of Malta’s past. “The area around Rabat is rich with remains. These tombs are the latest discovery we have made, with some interesting contents,” Anthony Pace, the Superintendent of Cultural Heritage, told The Sunday Times of Malta. “First we discovered this chamber and then we found more and more,” he said, as the newly unearthed depths of the playing field’s boundary wall revealed hand-chiselled crypts. Inside what looks like a small shelf carved out of the stone, about the size of an encyclopaedia, was one of several burial sites used for infants. “2,000 years ago, child mortality rates were high. They would lay them to rest in these miniature tombs, plaster it shut and then open it and use the site for a fresh burial as soon as they could. This would often be done over and over,” said Bernardette Mercieca Spiteri, an anthropologist studying the remains. It was nearly impossible, he added, to place a precise date on the burial sites, but the contents and the location indicated they were probably from a time when Malta was transitioning between Carthaginian colony to Roman – a time, he said, when a strong Jewish community was present on the island, along with merchants and colonial settlers.“These sites help us piece together that history, a time that we don’t know enough about,” Dr Pace said.

IRAN – Kalat - According to the Public Relations Office of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism, head of the archaeological team Meysam Labaf Khaniki said to this end a group of Iranian and British archeologists examined strategic points of the North Khorasan wall and made speculations in Arg-e Foroud Kalat and in one of the towers of the defensive wall of Kalat. The Public Relations Office of RICHT quoted Khaniki as saying that exploration in a small-scale speculation in the interior of one of the Kalat’s towers resulted in the discovery of three types of coal, which provided a proper opportunity for dating the absolute time of the operation of the wall and towers attaching to it. The archaeologist noted that survey and identification of a consistent complex of the walls, towers and defensive castles in this region is indicative of its strategic importance and also taking advantage of defensive structures in the completion of the natural wall of Hezar Masjed (Thousand Mosques). Khaniki concluded by saying that after the survey of the region all the architectural features were registered, adding that it is hoped that with the compilation of the final report a new horizon would be opened for the identification of the defensive structures of North Khorasan and its eastern continuation to Gorgan defensive wall. The favorable geographical conditions of northeast of Iran and the fertility of the plains at the foot of the mountains or between the heights have provided an appropriate ground for human settlement. Meanwhile, existence of ancient Neolithic Age zones up to the contemporary era in the northern strip of Khorasan Province is indicative of the importance and desirability of the area for the selection of location and human settlement.

USA – Lac Ontario - The 144-year-old shipwreck of a rare sailing vessel that typically wasn’t used for long voyages on the Great Lakes has been found in deep water off Lake Ontario’s New York shore, according to two underwater explorers. Western New York-based explorers Jim Kennard and Roger Pawlowski announced Friday that they identified the wreck as the Black Duck in September, three years after initially coming across it while using side-scan sonar in 350 feet of water off Oswego, New York. The 51-foot-long, single-mast ship known as a scow-sloop sank during a gale while hauling goods along the lake’s eastern end in August 1872.The Black Duck wreck is believed to be the only fully intact scow-sloop to exist in the Great Lakes. The vessels’ simple design -- squared bow and stern and a flat bottom -- allowed it to be run up on beaches for loading and unloading of cargo. “Scows, because of their shape, are workhorses,” Sowden said. “They’re not there to move fast through the water. They’re there to carry a lot of cargo.” Typically used on rivers or for short voyages on the Great Lakes, scow-sloops weren’t constructed for high winds and waves in open water.